Flights have been cancelled and delayed across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England after NATS suffered its second major technical failure in less than two weeks.
Airlines and airports faced renewed disruption on Monday, September 21, after a connectivity problem developed at the NATS air traffic control centre in Prestwick, Scotland.
The failure reduced the number of aircraft controllers could safely handle, forcing NATS to introduce temporary traffic restrictions while engineers investigated the problem. Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Belfast City and Belfast International were among the airports affected, alongside several domestic services serving airports farther south.
The problem occurred at the Prestwick control centre, rather than at Glasgow Prestwick Airport itself. The facility manages large areas of airspace over Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.
NATS confirmed that engineers had fixed the fault by approximately 1030 local time. However, airlines warned that cancellations and delays could continue as aircraft and crews were left out of position and the network recovered.
“The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed,” NATS said. “We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.”
The organisation apologised and urged passengers to continue checking their flight status with their airline.
Reports state that at least 35 flights had been cancelled by late morning. EasyJet was the worst-affected carrier, cancelling 29 of its 670 scheduled UK departures, while British Airways also warned customers to expect disruption. Ryanair claimed that more than 25,000 of its passengers had been affected, with over 140 services delayed.
Airports south of Manchester were described as “broadly unaffected”, although flights travelling north and domestic services linking London with Scotland and Northern Ireland experienced delays. London City, Gatwick and Luton also reported some disruption.
The latest failure comes just 13 days after a separate NATS software defect caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled, disrupting the journeys of hundreds of thousands of passengers. NATS stressed that Monday’s connectivity problem was unrelated to the earlier incident.
Questions Raised
Nevertheless, the timing has intensified questions over the resilience of the UK’s air traffic control infrastructure.
EasyJet said the latest incident “once again calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems”, while British Airways described another technical failure so soon after the previous outage as “disappointing”.
Ryanair renewed its demand for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign, accusing the organisation of failing to provide a sufficiently reliable system or effective backup.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander confirmed that the fault had been resolved but warned passengers to expect further delays while operations returned to normal.
Passengers due to travel are advised to check directly with their airline before leaving for the airport.
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